where the Whitaker sisters had lived all their lives. Tucker didn’t like walking on gravel. Or dirt. Or pretty much anything other than soft grass. Amanda didn’t feel like playing tug-of-war with him on his leash today, so she indulged the dog once she’d put him down and let him drag her around the yard with his nose to the ground while she took in more damage from the storm.
There were a few more downed trees closer to Birdie and Bunny’s house, and the portable storage sheds behind the shelter had taken a beating. One of them was lying on its side, which probably meant that the dog food it housed had been ruined.
What a mess.
“It’ll be fine, though,” she said to Tucker. “No one got hurt. That’s the most important thing, right?”
It was like talking to a brick wall. The little dog completely ignored her, because of course he did.
Birdie was crazy if she thought that’s the kind of man Amanda wanted to end up with someday. It was one thing to willingly hang out with a standoffish dog, but marrying an actual person who acted in such a way would be insane. Take Ryan Carter, for instance. Just when he’d finally acknowledged her existence and complimented her coffee, he upped and switched back into his indifferent self and bolted. He’d practically sprinted away from her, right there on Main Street. It would have been mortifying, if she cared about how he treated her.
Which she absolutely did not.
Tucker cocked his head at her, and she must have been imagining things because she could have sworn he had a mocking little gleam in his eyes, as if he knew exactly what—or whom—she was thinking about.
She glared at him. “Don’t start.”
She needed to get him back to his kennel anyway, or else she wouldn’t have time to walk any of the other dogs before she had to return to the Grille for the dinner rush. So she scooped him into her arms and made her way back to the kennel area.
She didn’t mean to overhear Birdie and Bunny’s conversation. She really didn’t. They were speaking in such hushed tones that at first Amanda thought she was alone in the concrete room. But as she rounded the corner toward the row of enclosures where Tucker’s kennel was located, their soft, Southern drawls grew louder. More urgent.
“I don’t understand,” Bunny said. “Twenty thousand dollars? Out of our own pockets? We don’t have that kind of money.”
“We’ll just have get it somehow.” Birdie’s tone was flat. Determined.
She’d always been the more practical sister—a no-nonsense go-getter, while Bunny was more of a dreamer. Sweet as could be, but somewhat naive.
Bunny sighed. “But what about the insurance?”
Amanda cleared her throat. She needed to make her presence known before she heard something she shouldn’t. But the sisters didn’t seem to hear her, too caught up in their intense conversation.
“Oh Bunny, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Birdie’s voice cracked, and it was then that Amanda realized it was too late. Too late to interrupt. Too late to pretend she hadn’t just realized the shelter was in serious trouble. “We don’t have any insurance.”
“We’re out of the pulled pork and hush puppies special,” Amanda poked her head into the dining room and announced.
“That was quick.” Belle glanced at her watch and sighed.
The Grille wasn’t scheduled to close for another two hours, and now they were down to one special—the pot roast. Slow-simmered in beef broth and smothered in onion gravy, it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t nearly as good as the wine-based recipe Amanda had been experimenting with.
Last week she’d brought her newest creation along to Sunday dinner at her parents’ house and placed it on the table as if it were a foil-wrapped work of art, steeped in pinot noir and slender, woodsy porcini mushrooms. Her sister and brother-in-law had loved it, as had her brother, Josh. Even her nieces and nephews had given it glowing reviews. But she hadn’t been able to convince her parents that it should replace the pot roast recipe the Grille had been using for the past sixty-eight years. They’d gone on and on about tradition and down-home Southern cooking, as if she’d told them she wanted to start feeding the good people of Spring Forest foie gras. It was maddening.
Amanda was trying her best to be patient. Her mom, in particular, had been especially sensitive about changing anything at the Grille since Amanda’s grandmother passed away last year. The restaurant had become a sort of monument.
But it couldn’t stay the same forever, could it? If this was going to be Amanda’s life from here on out, she needed to be able to put her own stamp on it.
But tonight, for once, she hadn’t spent the better part of the dinner rush rewriting the Grille’s menu in her head. While she’d been busy taking tickets from Belle, calling out orders to the kitchen staff and plating one serving of pulled pork after another, her mind had been back at Furever Paws.
How was it possible that Birdie and Bunny didn’t have insurance? It didn’t make sense. Amanda was pretty sure their younger brother, Gator, took care of all the shelter’s business dealings. And Gator was a big shot investment banker or something like that. He lived in a fancy Antebellum-style mansion outside Durham, with huge white columns and a yard full of trees dripping with Spanish moss. The house was so grand it had been pictured in Southern Living a few years ago. With all of his business success, and the many investments he’d made over the years, surely he knew the importance of having property insurance.
Then again, it didn’t really matter why the shelter was uninsured. The most important thing now was finding the money elsewhere to fix the storm damage, and apparently it was going to cost twenty thousand dollars. Minimum.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and headed to the dining room to correct the specials board with her head in a fog, trying to come up with a way to help that didn’t involve admitting to Birdie and Bunny she’d overheard their private conversation. But again, twenty thousand dollars was a lot of money. An enormous amount. If Amanda had that kind of cash just sitting around, she’d have already launched her dream catering add-on at the Grille. There was no way she could solve their problem on her own, and bringing in other people would mean sharing their secret.
At the moment, she had more pressing problems because no sooner had she climbed the step stool and swiped the eraser across the words pulled pork barbecue sandwich with hush puppies on the chalkboard hanging on the wall just to the right of the pie safe than someone behind her let out a sigh.
“Looks like I’m too late for the barbecue.”
Amanda turned to find Dr. Richard Jackson looking up at her with his arms crossed and a furrow in his brow.
“Sorry, Doc. We’re clean out.” Amanda stepped down until her feet were once again planted firmly on the Grille’s white-and-black-tiled floor. “You’re here a little later than usual, aren’t you?”
Dr. Jackson had become a regular at the Grille shortly after his wife passed away five years ago. Now he was almost like family and he usually showed up for dinner at six fifteen sharp, right after his veterinary practice closed up shop for the night.
He shrugged and did a little head tilt that made him look even more like Denzel Washington than he normally did. “I was out helping Birdie and Bunny with a sick llama.”
Amanda frowned. “Which one? Drama or Llama Bean?”
“Llama Bean.” He waved a hand. “Don’t worry—she’s going to be fine.”
“That was sweet of you.” Amanda lifted a brow.
Doc J was spending more and more time volunteering his services at Furever Paws, and she couldn’t help but wonder